Conventional beverage dispensers can pour a beverage by combining a syrup, sweetener, and/or water. These conventional beverage dispensers generally offer a finite variety of beverage selections that incorporate different kinds of syrups. The offered beverage selections can include branded and non-branded beverage selections. As an example, a single conventional dispenser using several different kinds of syrup might be able to offer choices of COCA-COLA™, DIET COCA-COLA™, SPRITE™, and a few other branded or non-branded beverage selections.
In order to dispense a particular beverage, conventional beverage dispenses typically actuate one or more solenoids, switches and/or valves associated with the various ingredients of the beverage. The associated solenoids, switches and/or valves for each ingredient are typically actuated for a predetermined period of timer, thereby causing a predetermined amount of ingredients to be dispensed for the selected beverage.
One problem with these types of conventional beverage dispensers is that the dispense quality of a selected beverage can be lowered or degraded if one or more of the ingredients for the selected beverage are not being dispensed properly. For example, a conventional dispenser may dispense a low quality COCA-COLA™ beverage if the COCA-COLA™ syrup is not being dispensed properly and/or if the source for the COCA-COLA™ syrup is empty or approximately empty. Additionally, it can be difficult for a customer or user of the dispenser to identify the low quality beverage. Furthermore, as more and more ingredients are combined to form or dispense a selected beverage, it can be difficult for a customer to identify the one or more ingredients that are not dispensed properly and, therefore, are contributing to the lower beverage quality.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved systems and methods for monitoring and control the dispense of a plurality of product forming ingredients.